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  • NEWS FEATURE

How protein-slayer drugs could beat some of the cruellest cancers

Momentum is building for PROTAC treatments that eliminate disease-causing proteins, including those responsible for difficult-to-treat childhood cancers.
By
  1. Ken Garber

    1. Ken Garber is a science writer in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Illustration showing a sword passing through the middle of a protein.

Illustration: Agnes Jonas

At three years old, Evan Lindberg was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer that develops in nerve tissue outside the brain. By that time, tumours had spread through his small body. Chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy and multiple surgeries followed. “For four years, my son never had a day off,” says Evan’s father, Gavin. “He was either in treatment or recovery. And frequently recovery was worse than the treatment.” Evan died in 2010 at the age of seven.

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Nature 641, 300-302 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-01350-2

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